


The Streetcorner Violinist

by interstellarstorms



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Episode: s02e03 The Reichenbach Fall, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, Post-Reichenbach, Sherlock's Violin, violin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-19
Updated: 2018-03-19
Packaged: 2019-04-04 17:47:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14025423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/interstellarstorms/pseuds/interstellarstorms
Summary: John Watson hears the sound of a violin for the first time since he saw the “death” of Sherlock Holmes





	The Streetcorner Violinist

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first post on AO3! Posted first on my Tumblr (interstellarstorms)

It’s a Tuesday afternoon, the first Tuesday afternoon John’s managed to drag himself out of bed since he saw his…flatmate fall. John can’t bring himself to refer to the taller man as anything but his flatmate in his head yet. Even the flatmate’s name itself makes John want to weep, although every time he sees it in the headlines he’s found that he’s been too numb and the tears just won’t fall. Sher…the flatmate can’t really be gone, can he?

Anyways, John Watson had finally managed to leave his bed for longer than five minutes, and he’s finally managed to leave 221B Baker Street itself for the first time, if only because he’s starving and he’s run out of food altogether. And now that he’s out, he can’t bring himself to return to the place they had shared. He can’t bring himself to see the spray paint smile on the walls or the rubbish his flatmate had left on every surface. So he wanders aimless around London, beyond anywhere he really knows well, to a place where it’s easier to forget those blue eyes and the man behind them.

He’s got no destination in mind, and distantly, he registers that the sky is darkening and his arm holding the groceries is starting to ache. And in that distant part of his mind, he can see that there’s a sad beauty to this part of London, too. The sunset makes silhouettes of the people passing by and a little Italian place that’s falling apart a little bit at the seams has fairy lights strung along the dirty exterior. 

And then, all of a sudden, he hears it. Like the call of a siren, he hears a sweet, familiar melody around the corner, and he half expects to see that elongated figure shifting passionately with the music, dark curls flying about his face. So John, instinctively as a cat drawn to catnip, rounds the corner at a jog, the tension in his face leaving with only childlike hope remaining.

It’s coming from a girl. Just some tangle-haired woman with an open case asking for donations. Just some stranger along this impoverished, lonely street. Just another human John Watson couldn’t give a damn about because it’s just another human being who isn’t Sherlock Holmes. And John Watson just breaks.

His groceries have fallen on the street, forgotten, as sobs finally wrack the former soldier’s body. God damn it, he’s seen hell on the battlefield, he’s seen death before. He’s a doctor with emotions perfefctly subdued to tell another broken widow the sad news. And here he is, Dr. John Hamish Watson, veteran, survivor, and hardened man (or so he thought), fallen on the ground, weeping like a child. He’s broken and it’s disgusting, really, not some pretty crying, but a complete and total mess.

Because the violin wasn’t Sherlock’s. Because Sherlock Holmes is dead. Jumped off a building over a week ago.

And John Watson had never even had the chance to tell him what he’d meant to him.

**Author's Note:**

> One last thought: I like to think the violinist John heard was Eurus but you can believe what you will.
> 
> Thank you for reading and don’t forget to check out interstellarstorms on Tumblr!


End file.
